This blog is the story of my research for my PhD thesis on ‘Winning the Peace: The British in occupied Germany, 1945-1948.’

My first post was nearly ten years ago, on 1 October 2005, when I enrolled, as a part-time student, on the MA in Contemporary British History at the University of London. Two years later I started on my PhD. I finished my thesis and was awarded the degree in February this year (2014).

I heard recently that my thesis has been awarded the annual prize of the German Historical Institute, London, given for an outstanding thesis on German history (submitted to a British university), on British history (submitted to a German university), or some aspect of Anglo-German relations.

Receiving the prize is a great honour, above all for the recognition it gives to the subject of my work – the post-war occupation of Germany by Britain. This area has been neglected by historians in recent years, but I hope this will change, as scholars discover new and innovative approaches to the subject.

In January 2011 I tried to explain why I wrote the blog. I said that, at first, I wrote it for myself. I didn’t know if anyone would read the blog and I didn’t care. Even if no-one else looked at it, I thought it would be useful as a way of helping me get my thoughts in order.

Researching a history PhD is about writing as much as it is about reading, working in the archives, and learning more about your subject. Writing a blog helped me express my ideas, and select which aspects of my work were most important.

But I was also amazed at how many people discovered the blog, read it, added their comments, and sent me emails: students and other academics working on projects or researching similar subjects, people exploring their family history, a few individuals who were there in person and could tell me about their own experiences, and children of British fathers and German mothers, who met each other and married in occupied Germany after the war.

As I became absorbed in my PhD research, the posts became more focussed on post-war Germany under occupation and the twelve British individuals I researched, who all worked for Military Government or the Control Commission.

More recently, as I came to the end of my research, I wrote about one or two topics that I found interesting, but had not included in my thesis, for one reason or another: such as the Craft of Research, the process of researching an writing a PhD thesis, and the extraordinary story of Sergeant Harry Furness, the first serving British solider in occupied Germany to marry a German.

I hope to continue my research over the next few years, working with other academics interested in developing new and innovative approaches to the study of the occupation of one country by another.

But this will be the start of a new story. The award of the prize of the German Historical Institute for my thesis seems a good time to bring this blog, which tells the story of my PhD, to a close.

This blog will remain open to anyone to read and add comments, if they wish. I hope it will provide a resource for anyone researching the occupation. But I do not propose to write any new posts. Please feel free to contact me by email, or ask any questions, which I will always try to answer.

Studying history can be like visiting a foreign country. It is all too easy to follow an interesting diversion, and you never quite know where it will take you.

One benefit of a biographical approach to the study of history, by which I mean ‘following the people’ and researching a group of individuals as a way to make sense of a particular subject or period (see previous posts) is that you can discover surprising connections with other times and places. People move from one job to another, from one place to another, and ways of thinking acquired earlier may have influenced what they did later.

I have already written, on this blog, about how some of the British individuals I researched in post-war Germany were heavily influenced by their previous experience in parts of the Empire.

In some cases, their connection with the Empire continued after they left Germany. Some of the British generals who worked in occupied Germany later held important positions during the conflicts that accompanied decolonisation and the end of Empire, for example General Gerald Templer in Malaya, and General George Erskine during the Mau Mau uprising in Kenya.

But the most intriguing historical diversion from my research on occupied Germany took me to the Aden Emergency and to Arabia. I have written before about Harold Ingrams, and how his work restoring democracy in Germany after the war was influenced by his experience as a colonial administrator in the Hadhramaut in southern Arabia, now part of the Republic of Yemen, but then ‘the Eastern Aden Protectorate’ and part of the British Empire.

Aden first became a British Colony in 1839, when the town was seized by troops of the East India Company. It was used as a re-fuelling station on the sea-route to India and was under the jurisdiction of the Government of India until 1937, when responsibility was transferred to the Colonial Office in London. British control then gradually extended to neighbouring areas, through treaties of ‘protection’ with local rulers. When Ingrams arrived in 1934 these territories had been linked together into a Western and an Eastern ‘Aden Protectorate’. Local rulers retained responsibility for internal affairs, on the understanding they would follow the advice of the ‘British Resident’, and not enter into alliances with other imperial powers apart from Britain.

Relations between Aden and its protectorates and the independent Kingdom of Yemen were tense for much of the period after 1918, and there were numerous feuds between local tribal rulers in the protectorates, which Ingrams attempted to resolve when he brokered a series of peace treaties between 1934 and 1937, signed by over a thousand chiefs and sultans. Ingrams left Arabia in 1944 and took up his position in occupied Germany in July 1945.

When Ingrams left Germany and travelled overland across the Sahara in 1947, to take up a new position as Chief Commissioner of the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast, now part of Ghana, he appeared full of optimism for the future. He wrote in his account of the journey, Seven Across the Sahara, of how ‘The days of colonization by force, exploitation and the imposition of an alien civilization by those who “knew what was best for the native” were over.’ He remembered his ‘ten happy years of experience in South Arabia…' [from 1934-1944], where he '… helped men of goodwill to make peace where for a millennium there had been war, and there we helped them to set up their own ordered government.’ He looked forward to ‘bonds of friendship’ being forged between the British and newly independent countries; bonds which would be ‘stronger than any between a conquering nation and subject peoples.’

Conditions in post-war Germany were, of course, very different from those Ingrams experienced in Arabia, but his personal motivation appears to have been the same. The same ideas, of making peace where there had been war, of creating an ‘ordered government’, and hoping to make friends of former enemies, could equally well be applied to occupied Germany as to Arabia.

While he was working in Germany, Ingrams updated his memoir, Arabia and the Isles, to bring the story up to date, introducing the relevant section as follows:

‘February of 1946. Winter in a small Westphalian town and I sit as it were before the freshly opened chest of memories of my last six Arabian years, turning over the pieces one by one to choose those which must be woven into the pattern of this story.’

He described how discussions with his brother Leonard, in the veranda of his house in Mukalla on the southern coast of Arabia, were ‘a part explanation of my presence in Germany to-day. For it was in this room that often of a night I used to think of the problem of the eradication of the ghastly doctrine of the Nazis and the redemption and regeneration of Germany. From these thoughts sprang the wish to help in the great task in which we are now engaged, to assist in the eventual peaceful co-operation by Germany in international life in Europe.’

A little later in the book he added that:

‘Strange though it may seem, the lessons learnt in Arabia have had their value in Germany. Not only has administration much in common in all countries, but human beings are everywhere much the same, subject to the same passions and responding in the same way to good and evil influences.’

Yet, while the outcome of the British occupation of Germany was relatively successful, British troops were forced to abandon Aden in 1967, after five years of war, in a hasty retreat that can only be described as a debacle. A naval task force of 24 ships evacuated the garrison. The short-lived ‘Federation of South Arabia’, created by the British between 1962 and 1964 through a forced merger of the city of Aden with the sultanates of the Eastern and Western ‘Protectorates’, collapsed in the face of local opposition.

According to Ingrams, writing later in 1963 in his book on The Yemen, British colonial policy changed in the late 1940s, to a more aggressive ‘forward policy’, which generated resistance from the Arabs:

‘Until the eve of the 1950s, British imperialism was not evident in the form in which imperialism has always called Arab defensive reflexes into play. Up till then the British were accepted as valued friends by the people of Aden and the Protectorate, and, even by Imams in the Yemen, as a beneficent presence…. Now it suffers from a clash between [Arab] nationalist politics and [British] latter-day imperialism, wearing the garb of British-Colony-and-Protectorate-emerging-into-modern-Western-democratic-welfare-nation-state.’

In 1966, in a long introduction to a third edition of Arabia and the Isles, Ingrams expanded on the theme, claiming that his ‘method of peacemaking in the 30’s was far more successful than the colonial methods which were introduced in the late 40’s and led to much or the trouble in the 50’s and 60’s.’

‘There was now [in the 1950s] a deliberate policy of imposing on these Arabs British ideas of government which had really been reached by a process of unconscious self-deception through the distortion of history….’

‘The [British] policy pursued for South Arabia in the last fifteen years or so has resulted in the taking of far too many unwarrantable risks with the lives of others, and this has led to many moral errors and political blunders, largely due to lack of knowledge and systematic thought … the basic cause of this has been the obstinate faith in the suitability of English institutions for all sorts and conditions of men.’

Ingrams’ was not entirely consistent in his views. When he first arrived in Germany, he appeared determined to impose ‘British ideas of government’ on reluctant Germans. He attempted to apply as much of the British model of democracy as he could, but with very limited success. In 1945 he wrote: ‘if we are to change German methods our only yardstick is our own system.’ British democracy, he believed, was the ‘most robust in the world’ and although ‘it is on British soil that it flourishes best … we do export it and tended carefully it grows and flourishes in diverse lands.’ He encountered strong opposition to his proposed reforms not only from German politicians of all political parties, who objected to the imposition of different model of local government, but also from many of his British colleagues.

By the time he left Germany, his views seem to have changed. He now accepted that the British model of government was not suitable for all, and it was not possible to impose political solutions, such as democracy or a unitary state, by force. As he wrote in 1966, now referring to Arabia, but perhaps influenced by his experiences in Germany:

‘If the people of the South [of Arabia] want unity and concord, as did those of the Hadhramaut in 1937, then with resolution and a spirit of goodwill, they may be able to achieve even a unitary state. But unity can only be won on acceptable terms by the Arabs themselves, and the British part can go no further than helping them to find a way of their own.’

In summary, it would appear that Ingrams, together with other British administrators and officials who worked in Germany, had come to understand the limitations of imposing British ideas of democracy in other countries. Meanwhile elsewhere in the Empire, British officials and administrators in Aden were still following a ‘forward policy’ of trying to extend their influence, in the mistaken belief that their form of government could be successfully transplanted to other parts of the world, regardless of local conditions, the interests of neighbouring countries, and the desires and preferences of the local inhabitants.

References

Harold Ingrams, Arabia and the Isles (London: John Murray, 1966) third edition, enlarged with an introduction covering recent developments in Southwest Arabia. First published in 1942

Harold Ingrams, The Yemen (London: John Murray, 1963)

Andrew Mumford, The Counter-Insurgency Myth: The British experience of irregular warfare (London and New York: Routledge, 2012)

In my last post, on History & Policy, I suggested there were two reasons why studying history can help us resolve some of the problems we face in the present. It provides background and context, to help us understand why people acted the way they did in the past, and it can help us think of options we may not have considered before, remove the blinkers of the present and open our eyes to other possibilities.

There is a third reason: history can remind us of fundamental principles which may have been forgotten. It can explain why institutions, laws, values and principles were first established, and help us judge if they need to be preserved, or if they no longer fulfil their original purpose and should be abolished or simply forgotten.

In my business career I came across the popular concept of the four stages of competence. Very briefly the idea is that, as individuals, we learn a new skill in four stages:

- unconscious incompetence: we don’t know we are doing something wrong- conscious incompetence: we realise we are doing something wrong and could do it better- conscious competence: we learn to do it right- unconscious competence: we become so good at it, that we do it right automatically, without thinking

If you search for the 'four stages of competence’ on the web, most sites claim that people perform best during the fourth stage, unconscious competence, when they do something automatically, without thinking; like driving a car, or riding a bicycle.

But there is another side to unconscious competence. It can lead, all too easily, right round the circle and back again to the beginning, to unconscious incompetence. We can become so good at doing something without thinking about it, that we fail to realise that the world around us has changed, or that we have changed and are no longer as good as we thought we were.

It seems to me that a tendency to forget fundamental political, social or moral principles – why certain institutions were first created; the United Nations or the European Court of Human Rights for example, or why we elect MPs, or why we have elected local authorities – is very similar. We continue to do something because ‘it has always been done that way’, like going to the polling station to vote in elections perhaps? This may not matter, but sometimes we may be surprised when things start to go wrong, and we don’t know why – the law of ‘unintended consequences’.

For my PhD, I studied the years immediately after the Second World War, researching twelve important and influential British people living and working in occupied Germany between 1945 and 1948: what they aimed to achieve, and why, and how this changed over time. Many fundamental aspects of the world we live in now were created at this time, in response to our parents’ or grandparents’ experience of the death and destruction of war. My parents, and many others of their generation, believed that they had to do everything they could to prevent another war and another Hitler coming to power; that everyone, regardless of which country they lived in, should be able to lead a decent life free from fear of hunger, poverty, disease, or expulsion from their homes; that governments should be freely elected and should act in the interests of all those they represent; that minorities should have certain basic rights enforced by law, such as the freedom to speak their language and practice their religious beliefs.

Fundamental issues such as these were especially important for the British people I researched for my PhD, working in occupied Germany. Their task, as they saw it, was to try to prevent another war, by disarming the German armed forces and dismantling weapons factories, but also by helping to create a set of political structures, after twelve years of fascist dictatorship, which would prevent another Hitler coming to power. They realised they could not do this on their own; it had to be done in co-operation with Germans, their former enemies. The structure of the Nazi state had to be destroyed, but what should take its place? Should the structure and institutions of the Weimar Republic be restored? Or was this too risky? In many ways the constitution of Weimar Republic, established in 1918 after the First World War, was a model of good democratic practice, but it had not prevented Hitler seizing power in 1933.

After a not very successful early attempt to introduce British democratic practices in Germany, such as the first past the post electoral system, the people I studied realised that democracy can only be introduced in another country through a process of dialogue, not by force or by totalitarian means. As I wrote in my policy paper published on the History and Policy web site, Germany: a case study in post-conflict reconstruction, they agreed with leading post-war German politicians on many basic principles, even if they disagreed on the details of how the principles should be implemented in practice. For example, they agreed on the decentralisation of power, the need to protect basic rights and safeguard the individual against excessive demands from an authoritarian government. They agreed that the electoral system should promote stable government with an effective but loyal opposition, that it should discourage extreme or ‘fractional parties’, and that electors should vote for a person to represent them, as well as voting for the political party that best matched their views and interests.

In Britain today, many of these principles appear to be forgotten. Central government has taken more power from local government. The government and right-wing press are arguing that decisions of the European Court of Human Rights should not apply in Britain. Extreme political parties, such the BNP and UKIP have not (yet) succeeded in gaining significant representation in Parliament, but there is no guarantee that the British electoral system will discourage this in future. As the number of people who vote in elections declines, (the turn out in the recent Wythenshawe by-election was as low as 28%), it is easier for a small number of activists to secure a majority in some constituencies. New technologies could enable electors to vote in direct referenda on a number of issues, which may have the advantage of increasing participation, but runs counter to the principle of representative democracy, in which voters elect an individual, who can, or should, study and consider the issues and act accordingly. In a referendum, decisions on complex issues are made by a simple majority of electors, voting to express an opinion which may be carefully considered, but may also be based on hearsay, prejudice, or influenced by emotionally charged campaigns in the press.

History does not provide all the answers, but it can help us ask the right questions.

History and Policy is a project, based at Kings College London and Cambridge University, which aims to create opportunities for historians, policy-makers and journalists to connect with each other. Over the past eight years working on my PhD as a mature student, I have been amazed by how much knowledge there is in the academic world that has not percolated through to the general public, or to the officials, journalists and politicians, who make or influence the decisions which affect our everyday lives.

A few months ago I joined the project’s network of 400 historians, willing to comment on UK and international policy issues and to contribute to the project’s web site. Around 150 ‘policy papers’, written by academic historians, have been published on the web site, and the project also arranges seminars and briefings for government departments. A policy paper I wrote on Germany 1945-1949: a case study in post-conflict reconstruction was published on the web site a few days ago. It aims to draw some lessons for contemporary operations, such as the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, from a better understanding of British experiences in post-war Germany – a subject I have spent the last six or more years studying, writing about some of the results of my research on this blog.

History never repeats itself exactly and the situation British troops faced in Germany after the Second World War was very different from modern Iraq or Afghanistan. Nevertheless, it seems to me that we can learn from what our predecessors did then: for example that ‘winning the war’ is not the same as ‘winning the peace’; that the inhabitants of a defeated country need to be given ‘hope for the future’, if they are to be expected to rebuild their country after the demoralisation and destruction of war; that ‘regime change’ and new political structures cannot be imposed by force, against the wishes of the inhabitants, as they can always be reversed once the occupying forces have left; and that personal reconciliation between victors and defeated is essential, to rebuild trust, if they are to work together on the task of reconstruction; but reconciliation does not happen automatically, it requires a conscious effort on both sides.

History is not a simple matter of cause and effect. If one set of events in the past were followed by a particular set of outcomes, this does not mean that an apparently similar later set of events will be followed by the same outcomes. Historical events are unique. Detailed circumstances are always different; often in ways we do not, and may never, fully understand.

But we can still benefit through studying what our predecessors did in the past, in two ways. Firstly, the past provides the historical background and context, to help us understand why people acted the way they did, the pressures they had to respond to, the limitations and constraints on their scope for action, and also, perhaps, some misconceptions which led them to act in ways we would no longer consider appropriate. Secondly, studying the past can help us think of options we may not have considered before. It can remove the blinkers of the present, and open our eyes to other possibilities.

Through analysing what people did then, and why, we can understand better the opportunities, and the constraints, within which we have to work in the present.

Happy New Year to all those reading this blog! I recently completed my thesis, on ‘Winning the Peace, The British in Occupied Germany, 1945-1948’, so I hope to have time to post a little more regularly in 2014 than I have in the past two years. I’ll start the New Year by writing about an issue that I had hoped to include in my thesis, but didn’t, as I couldn’t find enough material to pursue it properly.

I’ve written before about how the outlook of two of the British military governors in occupied Germany - Field Marshal Montgomery and General Brian Robertson - and other senior officers of their generation born in the 1880s and 1890s - such as Alec Bishop and Harold Ingrams - was permeated with the ideals, values and prejudices of the British Empire. As I progressed through my research, I wondered if their experience working as soldiers or administrators in the British Empire – ‘Echoes of Empire’ as I called it - encouraged some British people to perceive Germans after the war in similar terms to the native inhabitants of the colonies: as children who needed instruction and education, before they ‘grew up’, and became old and mature enough to take responsibility for governing themselves.

For example, Brian Robertson, the Deputy Military Governor of the British Zone of Occupation wrote, in the British Zone Review in October 1945, that their task, as defined in the Potsdam Agreement, of preparing Germany for ‘re-entry into the comity of nations’ was ‘rather like the problem of educating a child.’ Should they use ‘the stick or kindness?’ he asked, before advocating a ‘middle way’, writing that: ‘Nor do I believe that we should govern our actions either by vindictive harshness or by sentimentality.’ He then continued:

‘Just as in the case of children, what happens to them during their formative years has a lasting effect on them for the rest of their lives, so it may well be that in the case of the German nation, which is in a sense being reborn in the present stage of its history, what happens during the early years after its rebirth may have an effect upon its character for centuries to come…

'There is no place for high theory or for daring experiments in education. What we need to ensure is simple education of the mind and the inculcation of the Christian virtues.'

Petra Goedde claimed in her book GIs and Germans, that US soldiers in occupied Germany displayed similar attitudes, although she emphasised what she termed the ‘feminization’ of Germany, rather than ‘infantilization’, writing that:

‘Gender functioned as a crucial reference point in the discourse about Germany’s reconciliation with the United States. Within the first year of occupation, American soldiers developed a feminized and infantalized image of Germany that contrasted sharply with the masculine, wartime, image of Nazi storm troopers.’

Goedde argued that the non-fraternization orders imposed on both British and US troops at the end of the war, forbidding them to have any contact with German civilians, failed, because the Germans the soldiers met did not correspond to:

‘the [US] government’s official wartime image of a monolithic people unified by their support for the war. Instead they found a defeated population devastated by the destruction of the war and rather desperate in its desire to make peace with the Allies. While the Army pamphlets warned solders about “the German” – mostly in the masculine singular – soldiers saw a plurality of Germans, men and women, young and old, Nazis and non-Nazis, locals and refugees, perpetrators and victims. The lines that once had so clearly separated “us” from “them” became increasingly blurred….’

To a large extent, the attitudes of US and British troops simply reflected the reality on the ground. During the war, the Germans they encountered were (male) soldiers. After the war the people they met were mostly old men, women and children. Men of fighting age had either died during the war, or were held in prisoner-of-war camps. In 1946, for example, there were 7,279,400 more women than men in Germany. In the age group between 20 and 45 there were 1,482 women for every 1,000 men.

I wondered if, in the case of the British, there was more to it than that. Did British attitudes in Germany reflect similar attitudes to the ‘natives’ in the British Empire? I am no expert on the history of the Empire, but when I spoke to one or two of my colleagues, they confirmed that ‘paternalistic’ attitudes were very common among imperial officials and administrators. I tried to check this by reading some of the literature on imperial attitudes but, unfortunately, I have not yet found any books or articles on imperial history that specifically address the subject of ‘paternalism', or of the British treating the inhabitants of their imperial colonies, protectorates or dominions as children.

There were many parallels between the outlook of Indian Civil Service officials described in Clive Dewey’s Anglo-Indian Attitudes and those of British officials in Germany – in particular a sense of mission, modelled on, in Dewey's words, ‘the blend of paternalism and self-help which Anglican clergymen applied to poor parishioners’ in England - but no specific evidence of their describing Indians as children.

Douglas Lorimer, in Colour, Class and the Victorians, discussed how nineteenth-century British imperial attitudes towards foreigners were based on Victorian ideas of social class, in particular the idealised concept of the Anglo-Saxon ‘gentleman', in contrast with the ‘brutish lower orders.’ Increasingly during the nineteenth century, according to Lorimer, a new ‘rigid paternalism’, based on race, assumed that the native would remain the 'perpetual ward of his superior white guardians.'

I still think that ‘paternalistic’ or ‘infantilizing’ attitudes - treating ‘natives’ as children, who would eventually grow up and take responsibility for their own lives – were common among evangelical missionaries in the Empire, attempting to convert the heathen. They were also implied in the views of those, such as the Fabian Colonial Bureau, who promoted the idea of ‘Imperial Trusteeship' in the mid-Twentieth Century, but rarely, if ever, expressed explicitly.

If anyone reading this post, who knows more than I do about prevailing attitudes among officials in the British Empire, can shed any more light on the issue, please do get in touch, by commenting on this post, or emailing me suitable references to follow up.

It’s a pleasant surprise for a historian, to receive an eye-witness account of something they have researched in the archives, from someone who was there is person. Harry Furness, whose story I told in the previous post on this blog, was one of the British soldiers who took part in ‘Operation Butcher’, which, as I wrote in my earlier post on Hunting for Democracy, was described in the British Zone Review in November 1945 as:

'The biggest hunt ever organised. It is designed to kill as much wild pig, deer and other livestock as possible and thus supplement the meagre larder of the Germans.'

Harry Furness remembered ‘Operation Butcher’ well, because he took part in it. This is what he told me:

'You were quite right that with the great shortage of food, especially for the German civilian, it had been decided by the Control Commission to cull those over-large herds of deer in the nearby forests [whose numbers had not been controlled during the war] for food supplies. The Army had just finished war combat, so started to cull deer as a military operation. All the professional foresters had been disarmed. It was originally planned that only officers would hunt and kill the wild game. The great problem was that very few officers had any wild game hunting experience, combined with the fact that usually officers are not particularly well trained in rifle-craft; their war weapons were typically handguns and sub-machine guns. Very soon the German foresters became furious that wild game were not being humanely despatched. They insisted it had to be a one-shot kill.

The Control Commission were forced to re-evaluate the use of untrained shooters. In the area where I was stationed I was selected by my C.O. [Commanding Officer] and the Commission to shoot as many deer as possible working alongside a German forester. I had been highly trained as a Bisley ‘gravelbelly’ much earlier, so I was a well-qualified marksman. Indeed I accounted for a lot of deer always with one-shot kills. Following at some distance to the guide and myself, I had a section of soldiers with a couple of tracked Bren Gun Carriers who collected the killed game and then delivered it directly to German officials at the Rathaus (Town Hall) in Neheim, where they distributed the venison to local butchers in the surrounding areas. I only kept back a couple of killed deer, one for the Officers’ Mess, and one went to the Sergeants’ Mess … my recollection is that our method of preparation to eat venison wasn’t too good; it’s really a cook’s art.

I might mention that one of our officers (a Captain) scored a hat-trick during a deer hunt. He aimed at a deer standing next to a thick bush, and we quickly found out that his bullet had killed the deer and also another deer about to foal which couldn’t be seen behind the thick foliage, so three deer were killed with one rifle shot. It was, of course, an accident, but the German forester was unhappy at the result. ‘Operation Butcher’ didn’t last long. We killed a lot of deer, but it seemed to prove of little value in improving the food supply during that hard period.

At Ceasefire all German professional foresters had been disarmed. On retrospect it proved to be a military mistake, but it was very soon rectified and most of the hunters’ personal weapons were given back to them. After which no further unauthorised military hunting was allowed; it was by German permit only. Those few British solders with a track record of wild game hunting thereafter frequently received invitations to join German hunts.'

I’ve recently heard from Mr Harry Furness, who read my previous post on Marriage with ex-enemy nationals and told me that he believes he was the first British soldier in occupied Germany after the Second World War to marry a German woman. It’s a wonderful story:

'I first sighted my bride-to-be around the time that the Ceasefire in Europe was being negotiated in early May 1945; she was hanging washing on a line when I spotted her from a concealed position as I scouted far ahead of my infantry Battalion. I found out later that she was a refugee, having fled with her mother from their home in East Germany to escape before the attacking Russian Red Army reached anywhere near their town. She had only just arrived with her Mother to stay with distant relatives in the small West German town.

The Hallamshire Battalion of the York and Lancaster Regiment had been advancing fast and stopped just short of Neheim-Hüsten in Westphalia; the Battalion Commanding Officer was aware of the Ceasefire negotiations, but he did not know if this small town would be defended as a last ditch battle action by German soldiers. I was a trained Forward Scout and was sent to reconnoitre if defensive positions seemed likely, so I was definitely the first British soldier to enter this small town. I was able to report back that it appeared to be undefended, and the only German soldiers spotted were all wounded and probably under treatment at the town hospital. The Battalion then entered Neheim in ‘aircraft formation’, which meant a line of infantry on opposite sides of the streets. It was May 1945.

Shortly after, the news of the ceasefire was confirmed, and the war was over.

Close friendship blossomed between both of us, and it was soon obvious we were a perfect match together, so it was sometime around the end of 1945 that we attempted our first application to see if marriage would be permitted, but it was far too early for the authorities to consider, so it was not accepted at that time. In early 1946 we were officially engaged under German conventions, with parents on both sides in full agreement. After this we were busy collecting together all the very many relevant documents needed to obtain permission to marry. There was much confusion at that time over the type of paperwork we might need to complete. Some of the questionnaires were not relevant to either of us, but we slogged on so eventually had a very thick file to satisfy all situations.

Around the time of my birthday, 10th March 1947, my Commanding Officer told me he had been ordered to send me to an Army HQ as a very senior ranking officer wanted to talk with me. As a young Sergeant I admit I was rather overawed at the prospect of a high-ranking officer wanting to see me for I assumed it would be a high-level discouragement discussion. But it wasn’t like that at all. I travelled to Hamburg Hauptbahnhof where an army driver picked me up for my appointment with a brigadier and his aide. Now so very many years after that final interview my memory of all that took place has faded somewhat, but the high-lights still remain of what happened. The Brigadier was courteous to me, almost fatherly in fact. He was well informed of my previous applications to marry, and he knew that I’d been photographed by AFPU [the Army Film and Photograph Unit], and I’m sure that helped my application request.

I do remember it was a long discussion. He wanted to know how I had met my German fiancée and how fluent I was in German … whereupon in view of my interest in languages, he kindly offered to post me to a language school in London to study Japanese. He told me that Japanese linguists would be needed in the Far East. I very politely declined this fine offer as I wished to remain with my regiment until demobilised. He gave me a wise assessment of the resentment we could face following a major war, and he was right about that we eventually found. But before I left his office he told me he hoped that my Bride-to-be and I would have a long happy life together, so I knew right away that he was going to approve my marriage request. That particular high-level final interview had gone very well for which I was grateful. I am sure it was a one-off kind of interview, because typically soldiers applying to marry in Germany at later periods were dealt with by Lt. Colonels.

I mentioned above the Brigadier knew that I had been photographed by AFPU and he spoke about the circumstances. Briefly, in the Summer of 1945 two AFPU soldiers (an officer who did the interview and a sergeant/cameraman) came to Arnsberg Kaserne in Westphalia (a former German army barracks) and took some photographs of me for a series they had just started about soldiers who had distinguished themselves in some way during the campaign across North-West Europe 1944-5. Over the years since the war, that particular photo has been published in several military books.

That decisive interview at the Hamburg HQ gave my Battalion Commanding Officer (Lt. Col.) just sufficient time to rush through planning details for our marriage so the ceremony could take place before the Battalion entrained for our new duties in Berlin. The troop train was scheduled to leave early on the 23rd March ’47. It was packed solid with soldiers and supplies, but even so the Regimental Officers of my Battalion had done us proud, for they had arranged for us a separate compartment garlanded with flowers with a large notice ‘RESERVED FOR SERGEANT & MRS FURNESS.’

During that immediate post-war period I had held the appointment of Regimental Intelligence-Sergeant, and remained so until I left Berlin for final demobilisation. I had always been a specialist. My Wife was given all necessary British documents and later flew to the UK with her British passport. On our arrival in Berlin on the 23rd March ’47, we stayed at first in a small hotel on the Reichstrasse in Charlottenburg, but soon moved into an apartment located just near our barracks in Berlin-Spandau.

Someone must have alerted the German news media that the first marriage was about to take place between an English/German couple in Lüneburg, because they were waiting outside the Church of St Nicholas as the newly-weds came out. Amongst them was photojournalist Josef Makovec of Lüneburg. We know his name because he kindly sent us with compliments several spare prints on which his name was printed. In later years we know he became famous in his profession for his magazine reportage. It was because all our Battalion transport was packed ready for the journey to Berlin, that my Commanding Officer was gracious enough to loan me his personal Jeep for my Wife and I for the trips to Church, and rather curiously we were loaned a tracked Bren Gun Carrier with driver to transport our few wedding guests mostly my Bride’s relatives. It was thoughtful and a kindness I never forgot, for I had always received the support of my Battalion Officers. We had fought together in action and had a lot of respect for each other.

The military authorities can also move fast. By early April ‘47 I had already received a communication from the main York Infantry Depot UK that my Army pay had been increased as a married senior NCO, plus back-dated.

My later civilian work involved much travel, both UK and abroad, so I got to meet quite a few ex-soldiers who had married German girls. All of them had stories to tell, but in each case I found that all had been married months after my own at 12 Noon, 22nd March 1947, so I am inclined to think it must have been the Brigadier at Army HQ and his staff who fast-tracked my application to marry, which very probably makes us the FIRST. Whilst many soldiers had started to organise their piles of documents needed to apply for permission to marry, quite typically the general system was slow, so it was around June 1947 onwards before many got their wishes granted. My Wife and I had already been married at least four months earlier by then, for which I have to thank that Brigadier’s understanding.

At no time have my Wife and I ever sought personal publicity, we are far too reserved and prefer our privacy. Many years ago a TV documentary film company from Stuttgart contacted us and wanted to send a film crew to our home to chat on-camera about our long happy life together, plus they wanted to hear of the many resentments we once had to face (but those attitudes are long past now). We declined their reporting visit politely, not wishing to have our ’15 minutes of fame’ and although at times I have read newspaper features of veterans who had married in Germany, and many had claimed to be the first to marry, their dates were always behind ours.

At the time I’ve written these notes (May 2013) my beloved Wife and I have been together for some 68 years now, and have already celebrated our 66th Wedding Anniversary on the 22nd March 2013 and we’d readily do it all over again.'

References

Mr Furness provided the following details:

At 12 noon, on 22nd March 1947, Chaplain to the Forces: Captain C.B.G. Apivor C.E. married under British law (English-born) SERGEANT HARRY FURNESS (York and Lancaster Regiment) to ERNA MARIA KARHAN, a German-born national, The ceremony took place at the church of St Nicholas, Lüneburg. Immediately following the church ceremony there was an additional official signing under the Foreign Marriages Act; Army Form A43A. This was confirmed later by GHQ 2nd Echelon with registered number 7783 A43/3B Book of Marriages 11/03. Very soon afterwards a further ceremony took place under German law at the Berlin Hauptstandesamt, registered 249/1947. Thus all international marriage rules were in order. The Regiment moved the next morning following the Wedding to take up their duties as Garrrison Infantry in the British Sector of Berlin. The marriage process had been fast-tracked through the system so that Sergeant Furness could take his new bride through the heavily guarded and restricted Russian Zone to Berlin.

On the Wedding Day, he was 22 years old, and it was his wife’s 20th birthday!

Colonel Grimley was not alone in his belief that a shared interest in hunting encouraged mutual trust between British and Germans. General Gordon Macready, one of four British Regional Commissioners appointed in May 1946, responsible for all aspects of local and regional government in what is now the German Land, or region, of Niedersachsen (Lower Saxony), described in his memoirs how he worked together with the German ‘Prime Minister’ of his region, the social democrat Hinrich Wilhelm Kopf:

‘Co-operation with such a man was always pleasant, and on many occasions I enjoyed an excellent day’s sport with him. Inviting the Prime Minister to a shoot was always a matter of some delicacy. The control of all shooting and fishing had been taken over by the Allies, and no German was allowed to possess a firearm of any kind. Sporting guns and rifles had been collected immediately after the end of hostilities and in some localities the Allied military had senselessly destroyed piles of valuable sporting weapons by driving tanks over them. However, many remained and were kept under lock and key. When inviting Herr Kopf to a shoot, or accepting an invitation from him, I handed him one of his own guns which had fortunately been preserved, and gave him a ration of ammunition. The balance of the latter and the former were returned at the end of the shoot. We were glad when some months later, German high officials, estate owners and others who were vouched for by Military Government were allowed to resume possession of their guns.’

Hunting was a popular activity among many British army officers in the first half of the twentieth century. Here are two more examples from my researches among senior British army officers in occupied Germany:

General Alec Bishop wrote in his memoirs about life as a young British officer in India in the 1920s:

‘The big game shooting was first class, and included tiger, bison, wild boar, sambhur, cheetah and spotted deer. Serving officers could obtain … a licence entitling them to shoot one bison, one sambhur and four spotted deer in a season. The shooting of tiger and wild boar was not restricted … Life was very pleasant in those days for young officers serving in India. We were in fact a very privileged body of young men.’

General Brian Horrocks remembered his school holiday trips, before the First World War, to Gibraltar, where his father was serving as a doctor in the Royal Army Medical Corps:

‘The Gibraltar of those days was a small boy’s paradise, much more so than today, as we had free access to Spain. Life consisted of bathing, hunting with the Calpe hounds, cricket matches, race meetings and children’s parties – all great fun.’

What did hunting symbolise and mean for men such as these, when they found themselves in occupied Germany at the end of the war? Here are a few suggestions:

- Hunting wild animals (perhaps paradoxically) symbolised peace. It was what army officers did during peace time, when they were not at war.- Hunting, in occupied Germany, therefore meant that the war was over and they could (at last) return to activities they associated with life in peacetime.- Inviting the former enemy to accompany them symbolised reconciliation as well as peace. It symbolised mutual trust. - It showed they were now on the same side. Weapons confiscated earlier were reissued and used against a common enemy (the animals they hunted together).

But it was not that simple. British officers tried, on some occasions, to justify hunting as a way of solving the new problems they faced in peacetime. For example, I came across a brief article in the British Zone Reviewin November 1945, with the headline:

‘Troops are hunting game as a military operation’

‘Operation Butcher’…is probably the biggest hunt ever organised. It is designed to kill as much wild pig, deer and other livestock as possible and thus supplement the meagre larder of the Germans. It is being treated as a military operation.’

The war was over. Their job as army officers had been completed. But they now faced new problems, such as shortages of food among the German population, which they did not know how to solve. They had won the war but did not know how to win the peace. So they justified hunting on the basis that it alleviated food shortages. By calling it ‘Operation Butcher’ they went about it as if it were a military operation – trying to use the methods of war to solve the problems of peace.

Of course ‘Operation Butcher’ was only one of many things the British did in occupied Germany. The practical effect of hunting on alleviating food shortages was minimal. The solution which worked in the end was to increase the volume of food imports from the USA and Canada (see my earlier posts on Bread Rationing in Britain).

Then as now, hunting (at least in Britain) was an elite activity. It created mutual trust and reconciliation between some members of a British elite of senior army officers and German administrators. In some rural areas, as Colonel Grimley described in his article, this would extend to local farmers, but Germans living in poor conditions in the big cities were no more likely than British people at home to react favourably to stories of British officers out hunting, while they went short of food.

References

Lt-General Sir Gordon Macready, In the Wake of the Great (London: William Clowes and Sons Ltd, 1965)

In January 2008, I wrote on this blog that the approach I intended to adopt for my PhD research was to ‘Follow the People’. This, I believed, would be the best way of understanding what the British aimed to achieve in occupied Germany after the war, and why, at a time when official policy was unclear or seemed inappropriate for the conditions they found on the ground.

In September 2009 I wrote another post, on History and Biography, in which I outlined some of the advantages of a biographical approach, after reading the excellent collection of articles edited by Volker Berghahn and Simone Lässig, Biography between Structure and Agency.

I’ve now read an interesting article by Krista Cowman, on Collective Biography as a research method for historians, which provides further support for anyone considering this type of approach to their research. Collective biography, she wrote, has a long tradition, from classical and medieval collections of ‘lives’, to more recent social historians researching those ‘marginal to the historical mainstream.’ Despite still being seen by some historians as a ‘lightweight’ method, suitable for studies of politicians and pop stars but not for serious academic history, many historians were now, she added, ‘rediscovering an interest in individuals and their subjective experiences’. Collective biography was, she concluded, an ‘invaluable way of attempting to recover past experiences as well as of suggesting ways in which this was shaped by the broader structures in which it was situated.’

The distinguished historian and Professor at University College London, Mary Fulbrook, has also used a biographical approach, which she called ‘history from within’, in her latest book Dissonant Lives. In what appeared to me to be an excellent description of a biographical approach to writing history, she described her book as ‘concerned with the ways in which Germans of different ages and life stages variously lived through and across the major historical ruptures [of the twentieth] century … It attempts to combine an exploration of the subjective perceptions and lived experiences of succeeding generations with an analysis of changing historical structures and developments.’

In my case, studying the British in Occupied Germany between 1945 and 1948, I originally decided to adopt a biographical approach for practical reasons, as this seemed the only way I could make sense of a mass of data in the archives. I thought I could ‘follow the people’ in the same way as Theseus used Ariadne’s ball of thread to trace a path and escape from the labyrinth after killing the Minotaur. This has worked well as I tracked the twelve people I research through the archives, learning about what each of them did in Germany and why, and relating their actions to their family background and previous experience. Sometimes I was able to discover previously unknown connections between them and what they thought of each other.

I found a biographical approach helped me to understand some of the apparent contradictions in British policy. As well as explaining diversity, it also revealed what I considered to be the fundamental aims of the occupation. Once the differences between individuals were stripped away, it was possible to identify the key principles they all agreed on.

There are, of course, disadvantages as well as advantages to a biographical approach. It is good at explaining motivation, aims and intentions, and how these changed within a short period of time, but less able to explain how policies were played out in practice. As my supervisor said about one of my draft chapters, on Harold Ingrams and British attempts to reform local government in Germany, ‘Well, it is not really about local government, it is about what the British person in charge thought he was doing at the time, sometimes with hindsight.’ That was a fair comment. A focus on personal lives can make it difficult to examine any one theme or subject comprehensively over an extended period of time.

Because much of the source material was subjective, and some created with hindsight, evidence I obtained from the archives, and from reading personal papers, memoirs and autobiographies, had to be carefully validated, cross referenced, checked for consistency with other sources, and placed within its historical context. Nevertheless I would still claim that a biographical approach can offer distinct advantages for studying a relatively short period when policies and attitudes changed rapidly. It can be preferable to a structural, thematic or chronological approach, when dealing with a subject, like the British Military Government of Germany, that was essentially temporary in nature, with no consistent organisation or structure, even over the short three years of my study.

On a few occasions I could claim that specific outcomes were due to the deliberate decisions of individuals. For example, the decision by one young British officer, John Chaloner, to create the German news magazine, Der Spiegel, probably had more influence on the future of the West German media than anything else the British did during the occupation.

More generally, a biographical approach does not necessarily imply a belief in human agency, as opposed to a more deterministic view of history governed by long term social, economic or cultural structures and processes. Studying the subjective experiences of individuals often reveals the limitations and constraints which prevented them from achieving what they intended. A collective biography can be a good method for examining the aims, intentions and actions of individuals, but it can also help us understand the outcomes of their actions, and the deeper structures which characterised the society in which they lived.

I am coming to the end of my research and have been working on writing up my thesis, which explains why I have not posted very much here over the past few months. I hope to remedy this once the thesis is complete.

This means I have been thinking about the process of studying for a PhD. I have benefitted greatly from meeting with other students in a small ‘Reading Group’. At one of our meetings we discussed how to structure the thesis and how to turn a vague and general topic, which is what most of us start with, into a more specific set of questions, which together form a research ‘problem’, to which we propose a solution in our theses.

There are some useful books around which provide guidance on how to do this. One book I have found helpful is The Craft of Research. This provides advice on turning a broad topic into a focussed topic, a focussed topic into a set of research questions and a set of research questions into a research problem.

Some French theorists call this problematizing your topic, which is not the sort of thing we British normally do, but the authors of this book make it all seem quite simple. If you are working on a history, humanities or social science PhD, I would recommend you buy a copy, or borrow it from your library, and read it. The following is taken from my notes on the relevant chapters. (Any errors, omissions and misunderstandings are therefore mine, and not the fault of the book or the authors).

1) From a broad topic to a focused topic

A topic is probably too broad if you can state it in four or five words. Topics can be narrowed by adding words – nouns derived from verbs expressing actions or relationships - in particular conflict, description, contribution, development. This makes the topic dynamic rather than static.

2) From a focused topic to research questions

The key point here is to think about:

- What you are writing about – I am working on the topic of …- What you don’t know about it – because I want to find out …- Why you want your reader to know and care about it - in order to help my reader understand …

This can be simplified to:Topic: I am studying …Question: because I want to find out what / why / how …Significance: to help my reader understand …

3) From research questions to a research problem

A conceptual problem simply means not knowing or not understanding something.

The significance or importance of a conceptual problem lies in its consequence. Because we don’t understand one thing, this means that we don’t fully understand something else of greater significance.

This aims to answer the ‘So what’ problem.

Topic: I am studying … Question: because I want to find out what / why / how …Significance: to help my readers understand …Consequence: so that …

I have found this very helpful in my own research, trying to make sense of the mass of data I have accumulated and thinking about how to structure it all in the final thesis.

Here is my own version:

I am studying:- The contribution made by twelve important and influential individuals to the development and implementation of British policy in occupied Germany, in the first three years after the end of the Second World War.

Because I want to find out:- What these twelve individuals aimed to achieve, and why and how this changed over time.- Why British policy apparently changed from unconditional surrender, strict controls enforced by a long occupation and non-fraternisation with the German people, to physical and economic reconstruction, political renewal and personal reconciliation.

To help my readers understand:- The reasons for some of the apparent contradictions in British policy.- How and why British policy in occupied Germany changed very soon after the end of the war.- How and why British attitudes towards their former enemy changed in the transition from war to peace.- How individuals implemented, modified and interpreted official policies.- The successes and failures of the British in occupied Germany. How can you judge success or failure without understanding the original intention(s)?

So that my readers understand better:- The British contribution to the development of post-war Germany.- The origins of the Cold War, in particular how former enemies became allies and vice versa.- Some of the ways in which British people engaged with the rest of the world, through the British Empire and as a great power in Europe, what motivated them and what they were trying to achieve.- What happens in the aftermath of war, some of the problems faced by victors when they occupy the country of their defeated enemy, and how to plan better for occupation of a defeated country, after winning the war.